Brian by Jeremy Cooper

Someone should make a list of all the movies in this book

My dear friend Susie sent me a book the other day. I’ve known Susie since we were twelve (or younger?), and she has excellent taste. Any time Susie recommends something I read it. If she took the trouble to mail the book to me, I knew it had to be something special.

The book in question turned out to be Brian by Jeremy Cooper. There’s an excellent piece at the New York Review of Books by Clair Wills that’s a real review and well worth your time (though I did have one pretty fundamental disagreement with it), so I’m just going to keep it simple here.   

I loved Brian the novel, but I really loved Brian the character. Quiet to the point of near-silence, fixed to his routine, utterly alone. Brian’s days are friendless (not something that bothers him), loveless (again, unbothered), and solitary. He goes to work at his job, he goes to the same café for lunch every day, his routines fixed and unchanging. Brian has a sort of credo, repeated several times in the novel: “Keep watch. Stick to routine. Protect against surprise.” However, around middle age, he begins to worry that he doesn’t have any hobbies, so he decides to try film.

This is not a small decision for Brian. He agonizes over it, making pro and con lists, and after something like a year of deliberation, decides to purchase a membership to the British Film Institute, for the discount.

Then Brian goes to the movies.

Brian’s moviegoing experiences are almost the entirety of the novel. He discovers he loves Japanese films, much to his surprise, and his reactions are such that we begin to get a real feel for the kind of movie Brian likes. I don’t really know how to tell you how fascinating all of this is in practice, nor how much I enjoyed reading this book. But I can say, every time Brian so much as made a decision to speak to someone, I nearly cheered.

Slowly he becomes part of a group of regulars at the theater, and after about a decade, he makes a friend of one of them, Jack. They never get too close, mind you, and only once does Brian go to Jack’s apartment for tea, as that’s a little much for him. But the more his enthusiasm for film grows, the more delight we take in his life. It’s fun to watch Brian, the single most reticent character I’ve ever encountered in literature, love things. The routine gestures that mean so much to him—blasé conversation with his barber (he never changes barbers), his tea and lemon cake, his mild banter with the café owner and the single regular he speaks with. He has no desire to get to know anyone intimately, he finds the idea of himself having sex laughable, and he’d prefer, as much as possible, to keep everything exactly as it is.

There’s a few references to a traumatic upbringing in Brian’s past, but they aren’t really explored, mostly because Brian isn’t interested in exploring them. A stray comment about an unforgivable father, a difficult and dead mother, life in an orphanage. None of which he wants to dwell on. Brian’s interested in keeping with his routine. And films, of course.

I loved Brian’s reactions to movies, especially when I disagreed with his assessment of them. (He has a very consistent, particular taste, and when he likes something out of his ordinary, we’re just as surprised and delighted as he is.) I can’t remember the last time I felt so close to a character (something that would undoubtedly horrify Brian). I didn’t want him to change, or grow, or encounter some life-altering conflict that knocked him out of his shell. Why would I want something for someone that they absolutely do not want? For his own good? Who the hell am I to presume a thing like that?

I just loved the guy.

I also admired him. Despite whatever horrors Brain went through in the past, he found a way to live. One that works for him, unconventional as it might be. More than that, he found his own pleasure. That’s a grace.

As always, time is the greatest plot, and we watch Brian grow older, watch local cinemas close, watch his BFI film buff crew diminish, his health deteriorate as he ages. By this point every tiny thing in Brian’s life has become of the utmost importance to us, mostly because there’s so little of it, and because it’s all so very important to him.

Brian’s life is a small one, but taken on its own terms, not an unhappy one. It was a joy, for two hundred pages, to share it with him.